JUSTICE (OF., Fr. just ice, from Lat. justitia, justice, from justus, just, from jus, right, law). One of the cardinal virtues of the ancients, and the name for a principal aspect of social and moral duty in all ages. if we inquire into the nature of justice by examining moral and legal judgments current in civilized communities, we find such instances as the following: It is un just to deprive a man of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing by law belonging to him ; justice, therefore, requires us to re spect each one's rights before the law. Some times, however, we call the law itself unjust, in which case we may sympathize even with dis obedience to it. It is then supposed that there is some higher law that should have preference—as, for example, the moral law. Thus. it is con ceived by most men at the present day to he unjust to hold human beings in slavery, even though slavery may be countenanced by the law of the land. It is. however, only when the law has failed to keep pace with the growth of public opinion on moral questions that an institution like slavery can he sanctioned by the law and yet condemned as unjust by the most intelligent members of society. Other differences between
legal and moral justice arise from the limitations of the law, which cannot expediently undertake to regulate all the details of human life. Only those acts which it is for the welfare of society to enforce by external sanction may properly come under the cognizance of the law; hence there are necessarily many kinds of conduct which are morally unjust, and yet which are not recognized by law as unjust. Moral justice may, perhaps, be defined as allowing each man such freedom of action, security of possession, and realization of expectations based on custom as are compatible with the welfare of society. There is no such thing as absolute justice, if by that is meant any particular method of treatment which any man has a right to expect of society, regardless of the times in which he lives and of the character of his life. Consult the authorities referred to under ETHICS; also Willoughby, So cial Justice (New York, 1900).